


All Nature Laughed In the Sunshine

by inexplicifics



Category: Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, First Kiss, First Meetings, Fluff, M/M, maze
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-12
Updated: 2020-10-12
Packaged: 2021-03-08 02:21:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,778
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26964349
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/inexplicifics/pseuds/inexplicifics
Summary: Going to the largest corn maze within three hours' drive of Oxenfurt and racing his friends to the center had sounded like a good idea, right up until the point Jaskier realized he was completely lost.[A short fic for the Witcher Flash Fic Challenge #8]
Relationships: Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Jaskier | Dandelion
Comments: 69
Kudos: 766
Collections: The Witcher Flash Fic Challenge #008





	All Nature Laughed In the Sunshine

This was maybe not Jaskier’s brightest idea.

It had _sounded_ very clever, going out to a corn maze with his friends and racing to the center. Picking the biggest and most complicated corn maze within three hours’ drive of Oxenfurt College was only logical at that point. And going late in the evening was clearly a necessary level of added challenge; the growing darkness would add some spice, and they all had flashlights on their phones.

Unfortunately, now it’s getting on towards sunset and he’s standing at the junction between two paths, both of them curving off into the distance, and he has _no fucking clue_ which way he’s already been. He can _mostly_ figure out which way west is, based on the direction of the sun, but since he’s not entirely sure which way the center of the maze is from here, that doesn’t help at all. And he can’t see or hear any other people. He could easily be alone here, in the middle of a vast cornfield, miles from anywhere. And Jaskier’s read a little too much Seanan McGuire: it’s far, _far_ too easy to imagine each rustle of the wind in the cornstalks is He Who Walks Behind The Rows, come to claim a foolish music student who dared to enter his domain.

There’s a rather _louder_ rustle, and Jaskier jumps and whirls to see a tall man come around the corner, batting a few stray leaves away as they try to tangle in his hair.

“Um, hi?” Jaskier tries. The stranger is white-haired, but doesn’t look _that_ much older than Jaskier is otherwise; he’s also _unfairly_ attractive, with a jawline that could cut glass and eyes that catch the sunlight and seem to gleam golden for a moment. “Are you lost, too?”

“You’re not Lambert,” the stranger says.

“Not generally, no,” Jaskier agrees. “Should I be?”

“That’s his favorite song you were whistling,” the stranger says. “Thought you were him.”

“Unfortunately I am only myself,” Jaskier says, and gives the stranger a flourishing bow. “Jaskier Pankratz, at your service.”

“Geralt Rivia, at yours and your family’s,” the stranger says, bowing back with a little smile quirking his lips. Oh no, he’s hot _and_ makes Hobbit references.

“So who _is_ Lambert?” Jaskier inquires.

“My idiot little brother, who thought a corn maze was the best idea in the world,” Geralt Rivia sighs. “And then decided we should race to the middle.”

“That’s...also what I’m doing, actually,” Jaskier admits. “Apart from being _extremely_ lost. Would you like to be lost together?”

“Sure, I guess,” Geralt says. “Which way did you come from?”

“That way,” Jaskier says, pointing, “I _think_. I’ve gotten all turned around. They couldn’t have, I dunno, different colored corn in different sections?”

“I don’t think corn works that way,” Geralt says, giving Jaskier a look with which Jaskier is intimately familiar: _Is this guy completely batshit?_ But he looks more amused than disturbed, which is something.

“Well why not?” Jaskier asks, as Geralt leads the way down a path that looks exactly the same as every _other_ path in this damned maze. “I know there’s corn _kernels_ in different colors, there’s gem corn and flint corn and things like that, and there’s all the weird variant corn plants that, like, lie down instead of standing up straight, so why not different colors? Pink, maybe. Pink corn stalks would be interesting.”

“Would interfere with photosynthesis,” Geralt observes.

“But there are red-leafed plants!” Jaskier says. “Those weird ornamental things, and - and lettuce, right? I think there’s red lettuce. And there’s bougainvillea, too - I think the really colorful bits aren’t actually flowers? And there’s that kids’ science experiment with colored water, but I guess that’s flowers not leaves so it doesn’t really count. And they put dye in the shrimp in zoos so the flamingos stay pink! So maybe you could dye plants pink, too. Though I guess plants don’t eat shrimp.”

Geralt gives him a slightly baffled look. “Blood meal’s a fairly common fertilizer,” he says after a moment. “Guess you could make it out of shrimp, maybe.”

“There, see, that’s the sort of inventive thinking we need!” Jaskier says. “Also, _blood_ meal? Seriously?”

Geralt nods. “Bone meal, too.”

“Alright, that’s...slightly horrifying,” Jaskier says. “Oooh, alright, so that’s how you get the tree that grows out of the body of murdered sister, and then you could build the body of the harp from the tree’s wood instead of her bones, because frankly bones would make a _terrible_ harp - I guess you’d still have to string it with her hair, though, for the gruesomeness.”

“ _What?_ ”

“You know, the fairy tale of the two sisters - one of them drowns the other over a man, and then a bard comes along and builds a harp from her bones and it plays by itself to accuse the sister of murder. Which would be awfully useful in a court of law I suppose, although I don’t know if it’d be admissible. I wanted to do a properly spooky fairytale retelling for my songwriting class, because the assignment’s due on the day before All Hallows.”

“Huh,” Geralt says, pausing at another junction and peering down each path before turning right. “Songwriting class?”

“I’m at Oxenfurt,” Jaskier explains. “Triple major, performance and musical theory and drama, because I was very stupid and my advisor thinks it’ll be funny to see me burn out - joke’s on him, I’m going to have enough credits by the first semester of next year.”

“Huh,” Geralt says again. “Lambert’s at Oxenfurt. Chemistry and Wildlife Management.”

“...That’s an interesting combination,” Jaskier says thoughtfully.

“Lambert likes blowing things up. Wildlife Management’s sort of a family thing.”

“Lambert sounds like an absolutely fascinating and slightly terrifying person,” Jaskier says, quite honestly. “Did you go to Oxenfurt, too?”

Geralt nods and steers them left. “Wildlife Management and Forestry. Graduated three years ago.”

“And yet you got lost in a corn maze,” Jaskier grins. “Shouldn’t you have, like, a compass and a GPS and - I dunno - a machete or something?”

“Compass and GPS would be cheating,” Geralt shrugs, and produces a startlingly large sheathed knife out of a pocket. “Don’t need a machete.”

“I did not expect you to _actually_ have an enormous knife,” Jaskier says, staring as Geralt makes the knife disappear again.

“Got two,” Geralt says.

“That’s...a little worrying,” Jaskier says. “Please reassure me that I have not ended up in a corn maze with the continent’s most attractive serial killer.”

“I don’t kill people,” Geralt says, which is actually not as reassuring as he clearly thinks it is.

“What... _do_ you do, then?”

“I work out on the Preserve,” Geralt says.

“Ooh!” Jaskier says. He’s visited the Preserve, of course - yearly field trips all through grammar school, and one memorable overnight camping trip that a previous boyfriend suggested, which was a clusterfuck from start to finish but _does_ make for a damn good story and he’s gotten three separate songs out of it, so he figures it was worth it - but he recalls the Rangers who patrol the Preserve and keep stupid schoolchildren and stupider college students from getting themselves killed by monsters or other wildlife as being stern, solemn-faced middle-aged men and women, not absurdly attractive people only a few years older than himself. “Is that as exciting as it sounds?”

“Occasionally,” Geralt says.

“You must have so many stories,” Jaskier enthuses. “Monsters and adventures and all sorts of amazing things! Please, please tell me you’re amenable to being bribed for anecdotes.”

Geralt cocks an eyebrow at him. “What sort of bribes?”

“...Uh,” Jaskier says. “Well, I’m a college student, so...cheap beer?”

Geralt chuckles; it’s a lovely sound. “Got plenty of that at home.”

“I could write you songs?” Jaskier offers. “I mean, if you tell me stories I _will_ write songs about them, that’s the whole point, but I could write them specifically _for_ you.”

Geralt smirks and steers them around another corner; Jaskier is even more turned around than he was earlier, but Geralt seems to know what he’s doing. “Sounds like that’s more for you than me.”

“Name your price, then,” Jaskier says. “I mean, within reason, I probably won’t kill someone for you - depends on who it was, I suppose, if you happened to want Valdo fucking Marx dead I might actually pay _you_ for the opportunity -”

Geralt chuckles again. “Your number,” he says.

“...Like, how many people I’ve slept with?” Jaskier asks, baffled. “Because if you really _are_ a serial killer and you’re trying to find out if I’m the slutty friend who dies first, then I’m completely fucked and would like a head start, please, just so’s I’ve got a sporting chance to escape.”

Geralt rubs his forehead. “Your _phone_ number. So I can text you.”

“Oh,” Jaskier says, feeling very stupid. In his defense, he’s lost in a corn maze and there’s an absurdly hot guy apparently hitting on him despite having been the full focus of Jaskier’s...Jaskier-ness for the last ten minutes, which _does_ tend to put people off sometimes. “Right. Yes. I could give you that.” He tugs his phone out. “Give me yours and I’ll text you?”

Geralt rattles his number off, and Jaskier types _Lost in a corn maze and you haven’t murdered me yet_ and sends it off. Geralt’s pocket chimes gently, a surprisingly melodious sound.

“Hm,” Geralt says, sounding very satisfied, and steers them around one last corner. Jaskier stops dead, staring in wonder: they’ve reached a huge circular clearing in the corn, with a couple of benches around the edges and a truly disturbing scarecrow in the middle. On the other side of the clearing, a straight path leads all the way out of the maze. There is no one else there.

Jaskier flings his arms around Geralt with a whoop of glee. “Hah! Victory is ours! Well, yours, you did all the actual _finding_ the center, but I’m sure I provided - ah - an amusing distraction?”

Geralt smiles. “You did,” he agrees.

“I did?” Jaskier says.

Geralt ducks his head and rubs the tips of their noses together gently. “Learned about a new fucked-up fairytale.”

“Ooh, if you like fucked-up fairytales then you have come to the right place, my friend,” Jaskier grins. “I’ve already made ballads for half a dozen. Want to hear one?”

“Later, yes,” Geralt says. “Right now I’d like to kiss you.”

“Very straightforward,” Jaskier says approvingly. “Clear, concise, and comprehensible. Even if this _is_ just a way to get me to shut up, I approve wholeheartedly.”

Geralt is laughing even as their lips meet.

Maybe this corn maze _wasn’t_ such a terrible idea.


End file.
